SHANKER BLOG

Cheating, Honestly

Whatever one thinks of the heavy reliance on standardized tests in U.S. public education, one of the things on which there is wide agreement is that cheating must be prevented, and investigated when there’s evidence it might have occurred.

For anyone familiar with test-based accountability, recent cheating scandals in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and elsewhere are unlikely to have been surprising. There has always been cheating, and it can take many forms, ranging from explicit answer-changing to subtle coaching on test day. One cannot say with any certainty how widespread cheating is, but there is every reason to believe that high-stakes testing increases the likelihood that it will happen. The first step toward addressing that problem is to recognize it.

A district, state or nation that is unable or unwilling to acknowledge the possibility of cheating, do everything possible to prevent it, and face up to it when evidence suggests it has occurred, is ill-equipped to rely on test-based accountability policies.

There are disturbing indications of highly uneven quality in test security. A recent Atlanta Journal Constitutionreview of state policies found that, in many places, the security of tests is at least moderately, and perhaps severely compromised. For instance, roughly half of the 46 states that responded to the AJC’s survey reported that they didn’t analyze answer sheets for evidence of improprieties. In virtually all of them, teachers are asked to proctor their own students’ exams. A 2009 report from the General Accountability Office reached similar conclusions.

One might argue that high-stakes testing carries only weak incentives for prevention and particularly for investigation. Cheating can only improve results, and that’s not an outcome anyone is eager to question, especially given that test scores can make or break jobs, institutions and reputations. On the flip side of that equation, states and districts know that owning up to significant cheating having occurred on their watch will inevitably result in a political firestorm of the first order.

These efforts are also expensive. Several states and districts, including California and New York City, have cut back on monitoring due to budget cuts.

Another big, related problem when it comes to cheating investigations is that it is extraordinarily difficult to prove. Erasure analyses – when answer sheets are checked for erasure marks, and unusually high wrong-to-right corrections are flagged – cannot actually serve as conclusive evidence that cheating occurred. That usually requires a case-by-case investigation, including confessions from the people involved. In other words, it means thorough, difficult investigation, such as the one in Atlanta.

In contrast, there’s D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), where a 2011 USA Todayanalysis of answer sheets from the late 2000s found implausibly high “right-to-wrong” erasure rates in a few dozen schools (this was actually the second analysis reaching this conclusion; the first was in 2008, and was commissioned by DCPS’ parent agency).

The district’s response was to commission a couple of rather anemic investigations. For example, most recently, a probe conducted by the D.C. Office of the Inspector General (OIG) led the district to conclude that there was no “widespread cheating," even though the OIG’s on-the-ground investigation was basically limited to a single school, in which it did actually find evidence of cheating.

Not acknowledging such “widespread cheating” seems to be DCPS’ priority, in part because doing would leave their entire reform agenda open to serious fire.*

One obvious problem is that this is not a binary outcome: There’s a lot of space between no cheating and “widespread cheating."

But, in this case, whether cheating was rare, moderate or “widespread” is in many respects less significant than the unmistakable impression that DCPS seems unwilling to own up to the reality of the policies they have embraced.

Remember – during the years in question (and still today), DCPS' test results were national news. The pressure to boost scores was enormous. Jobs were on the line. Even strong supporters of the DC reforms must acknowledge that these conditions increase the likelihood of wrongdoing. Among officials implementing these policies, such acknowledgment is a responsibility.

In education, we hear a lot about "bold leadership." The USA Today story was an opportunity for such leadership. District officials should have looked the public in the eye and stated clearly that heavy reliance on high-stakes testing has unintended consequences, and that, while they don't believe cheating was rampant, it is clear that it occurred.

This response would have generated a tremendous wave of criticism (some of it unfair), and there’s a decent chance that a full-blown, multi-school investigation would have failed to produce a whole lot of conclusive evidence. But running for the barricades also brought serious criticism, and a more forthright approach would have at least demonstrated that school officials are realistic about the serious risks of the path they've chosen. And it might have cleared the way for other school leaders to do the same thing.**

Listen, it’s already very difficult to “trust” the results of state tests. There are any number of perfectly legal, albeit still harmful, ways to manipulate test scores, ranging from “teaching to the test” to concentrating efforts on students close to proficiency cutoffs (on a related note, see this truly remarkable 2009 story about one “strategy” used by DCPS).

Yet, for better or worse, we’re putting more and more faith in these tests, and so the absolute bare minimum we can do is to do everything possible to take precautions against outright cheating and investigate it when there’s even tentative indication that it might have occurred. That's one test-based incentive everyone can support.

Just ask Daniel Pink (Drive). He will explain that when carrots and sticks are the motivational method, you will find cheating, addiction, and myopic thinking. This is exactly what has happened with NCLB and standardized testing in this country. We have lost our sense of right and wrong when it comes to data--we want the right data at any cost--even the real education of the child, even our own integrity, to keep from sanctions and grab the carrot of recognition and awards. I have been asked by principals to tamper with the scores of my students and was dismissed eventually because I would not. Students are being robbed of their educations. It is a sad state of affairs!

I think part of the problem with acknowledging the cheating would be that one might be forced to acknowledge other psychological dimensions of the testing situation.
They would have to acknowledge that the tests are not simply assessments, an unintrusive dipping into the river of learning to measure its chemical makeup. Acknowledging and measuring the cheating would require owning up to the huge impact (pun intended) these tests have on the schools, from curriculum to pedagogy.
The more that the tests are used to make real decisions about people's jobs and communities, the more likely people are to cheat, but also the more likely they are to twist their lives and those of their students to do better on the tests as if that was a goal in itself.
High security measures make younger students more nervous. Try changing the bathroom policy in first grade, just for that one day.
Long tests make some students especially anxious (even if they are no stakes for the students, they still have to sit there). Then the school adjusts its curriculum to include test prep with the goal of "acclimating" students, getting used to the testing situation.
What do we end up with? Kindergardeners practicing logging in to the computer, in part because they will have to do that themselves when they take the tests in 2nd grade.

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Sponsored by the Albert Shanker Institute and the American Federation of Teachers, this conversation series is designed to engender lively and informative discussions on important educational issues. We deliberately invite speakers with diverse perspectives, including views other than those of the Albert Shanker Institute and the AFT. What is important is that these participants are committed to genuine engagement with each other.

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